Beginnings
by kismet-wayfinder
Summary: AU oneshot Rikai, Riku/Kairi. A question is hesitantly left unanswered & Riku makes his mind up to get back at Kairi for it. When things don't exactly go as planned, he has some explaining to do, while Kairi has to decide one way or the other her own self


_**Riku x Kairi | oneshot | hurt/comfort/romance **_

_Part One_

i caught myself

Kairi feels a strange shiver pass over her bare shoulders as she walks home from school with Sora. Just up ahead she can see a tall, jeans wearing and yellow-vested young man stepping in time with one of the other girls from school. She's new there. Kairi and Sora both are suspicious of this. In fact, they'd been speaking about it together after the ringing of the last bell, signaling that school was out for the evening.

"_We know you came here from a distant world, Kairi," _Sora had been saying then, speaking in a low voice. _"But we were all connected – we didn't know then what we know now, but either way it fits. Just because a few years have gone by with little trouble . . . in fact, I think I'm more suspicious _because _of the lack of trouble. I just - I just think it's odd that she pops up out of nowhere, even if she does look a little familiar to me."_

"_I know what you mean,"_ Kairi had answered, closing her locker door before running her hands back through her long, sangria-red hair as she sighs, dismissing the 'familiar-looking' comment as if it were nothing. _"And of all names, 'Angel' – who is this girl trying to convince us she is exactly? People don't just come to this island out of the blue all that often. That's just that . . ."_

As they walk together now in the present, the brown, spiky-haired Sora eyes the pair walking ahead of he and Kairi with scrutiny; he can tell they are speaking in hushed tones now, and he is curious to know what's it about. The fair-skinned Kairi is convinced that Sora's curiosity is born of concern about new trouble for the kingdoms being on the horizon. Sighing now under her breath, she glances away, knowing very well that her own curiosity and concern is born of - first and foremost – envy.

It's not Angel's dark hair that she wants for, nor her taller stature, longer legs, fuller lips, grey eyes – no, it's Riku's time spent with her that she's oh so envious about. She can hardly _stand it_.

Then, as if out from nowhere, Angel breaks away from Riku's side. Emitting a delighted sort of squeal, she soon hugs him, saying in a voice that is entirely too loud in the most unnecessary sort of way: "_Of course_ I'll go to the upcoming beach dance with you, Riku!"

Kairi feels sick to her stomach as she suddenly comes to a stop in her tracks. Her eyes begin burning in a way that suggest to her that she's in extreme danger of crying right then and there, on the spot. If this had been Riku's intent - to make her cry - then he had done well in succeeding, she had to admit. Bringing a hand to cover over her face as Sora places a consoling hand on her shoulder, the blue-eyed seventeen year old thinks back to the occurrence by the lockers a mere week beforehand.

"_I know that Sora and you are kind of like . . . well, you're just Sora and Kairi - always seen with one another and all that jazz – that's what people think of you two, anyway."_ Riku had said this to her just as she'd closed her locker door. She _had_ been talking about the upcoming beach dance a moment or two beforehand, but his words still felt awkward; random. Regardless of prose – or lack thereof – she gets the general idea of why the normally nonchalant Riku has said this to her for no terribly obvious reason.

"_Riku, are you going to ask me to –"_

"_Are you going to say yes if I do ask, Kairi?"_

The girl in pink sneakers hesitates for a moment_. "I think Sora is going to ask me . . ." _she confesses._ "I've overheard him saying it to himself, like he's practicing. He says, "Will you go to the beach dance with me?" to himself – sometimes, not every time, but still sometimes, he adds my name to it at the end, Riku."_

"_Ah. I see,"_ Riku is back to his nonchalant, cool and collected manner at once; he even half-shrugs. _"Can't blame a guy for trying, eh?"_

Kairi then watched as he walked on beyond her, to the outside of the school; she knows even then that she's made a mistake of some sort in not just going ahead and saying yes. Sora's question – after all – was sweet but purely hypothetical and only existent in theory. Riku . . . the guy that always had something about him that she found she couldn't stay away from – he had just asked her, face to face, in the flesh. _"Oh, I've screwed this all up, haven't I?"_

Present day Kairi can now answer her own question perfectly well. _I did screw it up big time_, she thinks to herself, stepping away from Sora gently, before rushing forward toward Riku and Angel, who have sense parted from their hug. "Riku -!" she cries out, a hand clutched at her aching breast.

"Kairi?" he says in return, looking back to regard her as she stands there, feeling lost and confused.

She knows what she wants to say to him. She wants to tell him that she never gave him a real answer and that he has no business asking this imposter friend to the dance before getting a legitimate response from she herself. She's known him longer, feels for him – she really cares. How could he treat her, in return, as if he didn't give a damn at all?

Then, she stops – all these words and more, they become lodged somewhere in her throat and she swallows them down. Maybe if Riku is willing to get over her so quickly, well, then maybe it's for the best that he takes this other pretty girl to the dance instead of her after all.

"_Kairi_?" Riku repeats back; still, nothing – he, rather than hearing an answer, watches as she clasps both hands over her reddened face, shoulders shaking as she cries into them; before he can get another word in edgewise toward her, she's turned and run off in the opposite direction.

_Part Two_

emergency

Riku exchanges uneasy looks with the brown-haired young woman standing nearby him. "Catherine," he says to her. "I think I've just screwed up in a big way. I'm sorry for asking you to be part of this."

"It's okay. I'm not a very convincing high school student anyway," she replies, looking quite upset with herself. "Go after her now, after all this. Tell her I'm sorry for me, will you? She seems like a sweet girl, but I have to be going back around to the other side of the island to be with my dad before he gets too worried about me staying away from home for too long. You know how he gets."

"Riku, what's going on?" Sora asks quite loudly then, sounding alarmed and concerned and confused all at once. "Why was Kairi crying like that – did you hurt her somehow? And Catherine, Riku? As in Catherine, your cousin who lives –"

"- on the other side of the island, yeah," the young woman confesses, looking and sounding beyond apologetic. "Angel was just a nickname to help me keep my cover. Riku needed help making Kairi see how much he wanted to take her to the dance and –"

"And long story short, yes, Sora – I just managed to hurt Kairi," Riku says, interupting his cousin. "While we're at it, if you were going to ask her to the dance yourself, then I understand why you would but . . . I really did have my heart set on asking her in the beginning, to be honest with you."

Sora looks crestfallen. He hangs his head for a few seconds at first, but he then lifts his face up to regard Riku again, giving him a single, determined nod. "I understand why you'd want to ask her, too. Go find her, Riku. Go ask her."

Returning the nod, the silver-haired eighteen year old gives a hasty wave of goodbye to his cousin and to his best friend before turning and taking off at a high running speed, aiming for the general direction that Kairi had headed toward.

To be truthful, he wasn't sure how far her long legs could have carried her in the time it took between the false exchange between he and Catherine and now. He could really only hope to guess the right directions to take – a left here, a slight right there, a second right, coming 'round a bend.

A few more turns later and finally he spots Kairi, leaning against the trunk of a shade tree. Since she has stopped her pursuit of flight from him, Riku figures he can momentarily drop his pursuit of her – just long enough to catch his breath at least. Leant over slightly, his hands on his knees for no more than a minute, Riku soon straightens back up and calmly approaches Kairi.

"Oh why'd you come find me for, Riku – to rub it in my face that you went and asked someone other than me to the dance?" she calls out to him when she spots him approaching; she is no longer crying, but her face is still flushed looking and there are residual tear-streaks evident there upon it.

The aqua-color eyed Riku doesn't speak in reply; merely shaking his head, he continues steadily making his way toward the slight-built girl he feels ashamed to have upset so terribly. When he's no more than five inches away from the tree, he finally does speak up. "That back there – it was all fake; _Angel_ , well, the thing about her is that her real name is Catherine and she isn't some random new student from a new world; she's just my cousin. She happens to live on the other side of this island. I knew you'd never met her before, and she was just young enough to pass as a student, though she's actually a few years older than me."

"Riku," Kairi says, keeping her back against the tree as she shakes her head slightly. "I don't understand."

"Well, she was never really in any classes at our school. I begged her to come over and help me, well, make you jealous – make you maybe reconsider going to the dance with me. It was rotten of me, I know, and I apologize. But so, I just had her come for a visit and we had it worked all out – how she'd show up at our school whenever I thought it might be likely I'd run into you. So she did that yesterday and today and then, like I said, I pretended to ask her out. I wanted to make you angry and more determined to have me be the one to take you to the beach dance . . . I never ever had it in my heart to make you so sad. Kairi, I really am so sorry."

By now Riku is standing right in front of the red-haired girl. "Will you accept my apology, Kairi?" he asks her; his voice, though still so deep and certain sounding, has an undertone to it that makes any frosty demeanor she may have had left melt away at once.

"Of course I forgive you, Riku," she says to him, glancing off to the side. "I didn't want to hurt Sora's feelings is all. That's all that made me hesitant in the first place."

"I don't want to hurt his feelings, either. I had a word with him about it – he told me to go ahead, to come after you and to ask you to the dance."

Kairi feels mildly surprised that he bothered to do more or less get Sora's blessing in the first place. This news serves to make her all the more warmed up to her old friend now once again. She looks back at him as he reaches his hand out toward hers. She reaches out as well, and soon she can feel her smaller hand being held securely within his bigger, stronger one. When he gives the held hand a squeeze, she squeezes his hand back.

Raising his eyebrows slightly, Riku gives a crooked sort of half-grin. "Does this mean you'll let me take you to the beach dance then?"

As Kairi nods her head to give him her answer, she feels a flicker of a spark ignite within her bosom. This isn't just a promise to go to a dance. This, she thinks, will be the start of something big – something big and previously unexpected. As Riku leans down to plant a kiss on her forehead, she moves her hand slightly within his, until their fingers become interlocked completely.

Whatever caused the spark, however unexpected it might've been, regardless of how crazy it may end up being and despite the possibility of a hundred newly-created ups and downs, Kairi knows that she is down for it. Riku will be more than worth the ride.


End file.
